"I might—might learn to—Grandpa," she murmured grudgingly.
"Now," said the Colonel decisively, "you shall start up there Monday morning—and you tell that Lem Lutts for me that I want a good, steady, dependable man. I'll give him charge of my entire stock farm—seven hundred acres—and three hundred head of the best horse-blood on the face of the earth. I'll train Lem and make him manager. If he will, he can go to school and polish himself up first. And that little Buddy Lutts—you tell him I'll give him a pony all for his own, and keep him in clothes and spending money if he'll come down to Lexington and go to school once in awhile."
"Now, I want to ask you, Belle-Ann—about that old negro chap, Slab. Is the lobe of his left ear missing?"
"Oh, yes—yes!" exclaimed the mystified girl.
"And is he a very long, narrow gentleman?"
"Surely—he's quite tall——"
"Did you ever hear him sing 'Kitty Wells'?"
Belle-Ann clapped her hands in childish glee.
"I've heard that song every night all my life, Grandpa; how did you-all know Slab, Grandpa?"
"Ah! now we have it—when Miss Worth mentioned him, telling me things about him as you had told her, I would always say that he is the same old Slab—and I'll bet the best horse I've got that he is the same. He belonged to my uncle who lived on the plantation adjoining my father's. Slab was asleep in the shade of a porch one day when I, a boy of seven years, meaning to startle him, slipped up and held a snapping turtle close to his face. When I started to arouse him with one hand, the turtle suddenly shot his neck out and gabbed old Slab by the ear. Then Slab woke up. You ask him about that; and you ask him if he remembers the time old Hickamohawk ran away with him—and you bring him down here with you. Just tell him that Amos Tennytown wants him and he'll come—bring the whole family—there's room for us all, Belle-Ann."